Workforce pressures: The extent of staff pressure and workloads in local authority children’s services and their impacting on the three aspects of our inquiry.

Social Care Wales has worked with the sector to produce a workforce plan for Social Workers, and this can be accessed here us/workforce-strategy/social-work-workforce-plan-2022-to-2025 and highlights the range of actions to support social work workforce in Wales. [...] The interviews highlighted key concerns in relation to workforce pressures: • Recruitment and retention • Use of agency staff • Morale and sense of not feeling valued and recognised • Capacity for workforce planning within local authorities, specific to children’s services • Workforce planning in relation to the elimination of profit and upscaling of local authority children’s residential provisio. [...] Children's Services - joiners and leavers in 2022 300 250 200 150 100 50 0 Joiners Leavers Social Work agency staff: The extent of the use of agency staff for children’s social care and its impact Some data suggests that the use of agency workers in children’s services has decreased slightly over the course of the year from 56 in 2021 to 49 in 2022. [...] Before care: Safely reducing the number of children in the care system Please outline a maximum of three top priorities for radical reform of services for safely reducing the number of children in the care system: Priority 1: Increase the sufficiency and sustainability of family and youth support, including community based services that sit outside of children’s services, to support early identifi. [...] Priority 2: An ambitious all Wales strategy that is able to implement a long term plan to tackle the root causes of poverty and inequality as well as respond to the immediate needs of the increasing numbers of children living in poverty.